June 29–September 9, 2012

About the Artist

As a youth in rural Fayette County, Kentucky, Jay Bolotin made sculpture from fallen trees and experienced the work of artists like Henry Moore through illustrated magazines. Wanting to “make things that expressed what was otherwise without expression,” he studied art, first at the Rhode Island School of Design, and then as an apprentice to the late sculptor Robert Lamb. In the early 1970s, he pursued his interest in music, working as a songwriter with Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, and Dan Fogelberg.

The personal and narrative quality in Bolotin’s work as a musician is paralleled in his visual art. The viewer encounters characters who are embroiled in psychologically intricate dramas, and these characters appear—and reappear—in multiple pieces, created in a variety of media. This interdisciplinary approach to his art has provided the foundation for Bolotin’s multilayered, performance-based works that include plays, operas, films, and a music-theater-dance collaboration.

At the suggestion of his friend and long-time gallerist, Carl Solway, Bolotin began making prints in the early 1980s. Although he tried different media, the directness of woodcut appealed to him, and it has been a major component of his visual art ever since. Bolotin’s art work is represented in the collections of The New York Public Library; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Seattle Art Museum; Cincinnati Art Museum, and numerous other public and private collections. He resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.